Few tasks have given such pleasure to the National Spiritual Assembly as the publication of this book. The thirty messages which it contains are collated from letters and cablegrams sent to the Canadian Bahá’í community by Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Cause. They span virtually the entire thirty-six years of his ministry, but the reader will not fail to note that apart from the first letter (written in January 1923, shortly after Shoghi Effendi assumed his responsibilities at the World Centre) the messages are concentrated in the nine years from 1948 to 1957. The explanation lies, of course, in the fact that prior to April 1948, Canadian and American Bahá’ís were members of a single community embracing the two countries. The great body of messages addressed to that community have found permanence in several other volumes,1 and are now a part of the heritage of the entire Bahá’í world. The Canadian National Spiritual Assembly has long desired to contribute to that inheritance this final share of the trust left to it by the Guardian. No more fitting occasion could be found than the inauguration of the first of the global plans designed by the Universal House of Justice and inspired by just such undertakings as form the subject of much of this book.